


5B

by Accal1a



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Phobias, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 07:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3641430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accal1a/pseuds/Accal1a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke loves spiders, Bellamy does not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	5B

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sam_sour_wolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sam_sour_wolf/gifts).



> Written for the prompt: "My pet tarantula escaped and I forgot to warn the guy below me who is scared of spiders" AU

Clarke had been keeping spiders for years.

She loved the way that they moved, the way that they didn’t move. She loved the excruciating wait that you had whilst they moulted and the care that was required to keep them alive. They were certainly not an ‘easy’ pet to keep but she wouldn’t have it any other way. Colin was her baby and she was proud to own him.

The odd guy who lived below her was not similarly enamoured with spiders.

She had been walking down the stairs to work one day and she had ended up walking behind the tall, dark and okay yes he WAS handsome form of the guy from 5B.

About halfway down the stairs, the man shrieked at an ear-splitting volume and leapt to one side of the staircase, hugging the wall. He began to creep down that side but then, shortly afterwards, became completely immobile. He was staring at the wall on the other side of the narrow stairwell.

By the time Clarke got there, the man was flat against the opposite wall and visibly shaking. She walked up to him slowly, careful not to spook him any further. The man was clearly scared of something.

“Are you okay?” She asked quietly, pitching her voice quite low.

The man merely shook his head and carried on pressing himself into the wall.

Clarke followed his gaze and saw for the first time a spider on the wall of the staircase. It was quite a large spider by all accounts and it was clearly causing this guy a problem. It moved as Clarke went towards it and the man made what seemed to be an involuntary noise behind her.

When she picked it up, the man actually moaned.

Smiling, she turned back round, hands cupped round the spider lovingly, it’s tiny legs partially tickling her palms. As she turned to walk down the stairs, past the man, he briefly shook his head and carried on staring at her cupped hands, wide-eyed.

Finally understanding, Clarke stepped back, up the stairs slightly and gestured that he should go first. She saw the look of horror cross the man’s face when she gestured with her cupped hands and she briefly wondered whether he thought she was going to throw it at him.

The man ran down the stairs in front of her and by the time she’d reached the ground floor and placed the spider on a bush outside the main door he was long gone.

~~~

“Yes Mum, No Mum. Look I don’t know how it happened, okay! Yes, I know I’m supposed to check that. Yes, I did! Well yes, I was wrong but I wasn’t being negligent. Look Mum I can’t talk about this right now.”

Clarke hung up and pulled her fingers through her hair in frustration.

Colin had escaped; and far from her mother helping and giving advice she had chosen to lecture her daughter on the inadequacies of her tarantula husbandry. It had been an easy mistake to make and she was sure she wasn’t the first person to have this problem but she was kicking herself over her idiocy nonetheless.

Colin had been moulting for a while and he’d finally removed his Exoskeleton but she hadn’t had the chance to take it out of his tank yet. She wanted to try to preserve this one. The last time he’d moulted she’d gone in all gung-ho and managed to break the exoskeleton in pieces.

When she’d opened the tank earlier to top up his water, she’d seen the old skin on the floor of the tank and assumed it was him. Seconds later, he’d made a bid for freedom (having actually been hiding in the lid which she opened) and had scuttled under the sofa.

Despite tearing her whole flat to pieces she was having no luck finding him and she was starting to get a little worried.

After moulting, tarantula's are rather fragile whilst they grow their new skin. They don’t need feeding but do require extra care and she’d managed to let it out where anything could get to it. She thought it would fare pretty well against anything which wanted to eat it for dinner - after all it still had it’s venom - but she was worried nonetheless. Colin was part of the family and she didn’t want him to go.

~~~

It was only latently that she realised it would be a good idea to tell the other tenants in case they saw him. 

She’d made her way down a few floors (going up from her middle floor apartment, starting from the top and working her way down) when she remembered the guy in the flat below her. How the hell was she going to break this to him? ‘Excuse me, you remember when I freaked you out picking up that spider in front of you? Well I actually keep a tarantula as a pet and he’s on the loose’ ‘Yes, I thought you’d be fine with that, have a nice life, goodbye.’

She was still running through scenarios in her head when she heard a crash coming from 5B. She knocked but there wasn’t an answer. She knocked again, louder and she heard a very timid voice. 

“Come In!”

When she walked into the apartment it was very much the same as her own and she looked around briefly. The man (and had he got HOTTER in the three weeks since she’d last seen him?) was standing on a dining room chair, a plant sprayer bottle in one hand and a copy of National Geographic in the other.

His wild eyes found hers and he lowered his weapons slightly.

“Good evening.” Clarke said, not entirely sure what the etiquette was in this sort of situation.

A strangled noise came out the man’s mouth and she remembered the last time she’d heard it.

“Spider?” She asked and watched as he shook slightly.

He nodded; eyes still comically wide.

Clarke started to look around the place, under cupboards and behind curtains but to no avail.

“Why are you standing on a chair?” Clarke asked as she looked.

“Safety!” the man replied, still not lowering the items in his hands.

“You know spiders can climb, right?”

“WHAT?!” The man shouted and seemed torn between getting down off the chair and staying on it, his eyes now scanning the ceiling as well as the rest of the apartment.

“Yeah, how do you think they get on walls sometimes?” Clarke asked, surprised that he didn’t know this.

The man sunk down and perched on the back of the chair, his feet still off the floor on the seat.

“Do you have a name?” Clarke continued, trying to look without looking like she was looking. 

There was something about the guy which she couldn’t put her finger on. She thought it might be something to do with the fact that he clearly wasn’t concerned about acting fragile around perfect strangers.

“Bellamy.” The guy replied. 

Clarke thought the name suited him, an odd name for an odd person.

“Okay Bellamy. I’m Clarke. Um…can you tell me what the spider looked like?” She glanced over at him again then and saw the look of confusion cross his face.

“Big.”

She waited.

“Blue in places.”

She carried on waiting.

“Big.” He said again and didn't seem to be able to tell her anything else.

“Colin!” Clarke sighed, her whole body relaxing.

“No...Bellamy.” 

“Oh, sorry. No, the spider’s called Colin.”

“You know the name of the spider that’s currently in my apartment?”

Clarke wondered whether he was always this slow or whether the heightened fear response was causing him to act like it.

“The spider should be in my apartment.” Clarke replied.

“No arguments here, at least you like the damn things! What are you, Queen of the Spiders or something?”

“That’s my mother.” Clarke said. “I’m probably more of a Princess.”

Bellamy opened his mouth to say something else and then screamed and threw the copy of National Geographic into the far corner; standing once again on the chair, his hair brushing the ceiling.

“Don’t!” Clarke said, running to where the magazine was now lying.

She found Colin, huddled in a corner, clearly surprised by the sudden loud noise. She picked him up carefully and cradled him to her chest, running out of the apartment.

Bellamy just looked after her, a surprised look on his face.

~~~

Once Clarke had got Colin settled and checked he was okay, she removed the exoskeleton. It broke but she was so happy to have Colin back she didn’t care. Throwing the pieces in the bin, she made her way back down the stairs.

Bellamy was still standing on the chair but he was looking a little sheepish now.

When Clarke walked in and shut the door to the apartment, he carefully got down from the chair.

“So, spiders huh?” He said, smiling, trying to gloss over what had just happened.

“Yeah…” Clarke said slowly, noticing the way that his eyes seemed to light up when he smiled.

“I…er…don’t really like them much.”

“No kidding!” Clarke replied.

There was an uneasy pause, in which Bellamy tried to work out exactly what shade of blonde Clarke’s hair was. 

“So, Princess, I probably owe you dinner. You are my saviour after all.”

Clarke blushed, which Bellamy found adorable; and he wondered when exactly he’d moved from revulsion that this girl could pick up spiders to wanting to kiss her.

“That’s not necessary.” Clarke said automatically and then mentally kicked herself. Here was the perfect excuse for a sort-of date and she was messing it up! She didn't have much time for dating and here was a hot guy, asking her to dinner.

“I think it is.” Bellamy replied. “I’d still be standing on a chair if it wasn’t for you.”

“You wouldn’t have needed to stand on a chair if it wasn’t for me.”

“But then I wouldn’t have met you.” Bellamy said, stepping closer.

“True.” Clarke said, closing the gap.

They looked at each other for a moment before their lips met and the kiss was like nothing either of them had ever felt before.

When they broke off, Clarke spoke first. “So, dinner?”

“Let’s go out, I’m not sure the apartment is totally safe yet.” Bellamy replied, shuddering slightly.

“If you’re lucky, I’ll check for spiders when we get back.” Clarke said, winking.

**Author's Note:**

> The spider is called Colin in honour of my best friend Matthew's dear departed tarantula of the same name; and the 'exoskeleton confusion and spider jumping out' actually happened to my ex-girlfriend and I.


End file.
